Blogs and Commentary

Tufts Documentary Shows Inside Look
at 2010 National Championship Team

If you're a sucker for lacrosse in HD and sports documentaries,
here's a must watch.

"Tufts Lacrosse
2010," details the story of the 2010 Tufts men's lacrosse team
that won the NCAA Division III national championship, the first
national title of any kind in school history. It's available for
free to watch here, on jumboslaxtv.com, and it's on YouTube and another free
video site.

Tufts student Arlin Ladue spent seven months filming and editing
the movie, and former Tufts player Drew Innis produced the film.
Ladue covered 11 Tufts games, spent eight full days with team and
shot 2,000 gigabytes of HD footage, he told The Tufts Daily before the movie premiered
on-campus in October. He also traveled with the team for a
tournament game at Cortland and to the final four in Baltimore.

Putting my critic's hat on for a second ... I liked the
movie.

How could you not when it guest stars a LaxMagazine.com article that predicted
Cortland would beat Tufts in last year's NCAA semifinals. Jumbos
coach Mike Daly pulled out the article to use as a motivational
tactic, on the team bus on the way to the game. Check that out
around the 10:10 mark.

The film is filled with unique inside looks at the team.

During a scouting report session leading up to the Cortland
game, Daly told the team, "They've got some big kids, a lot like
Bowdoin. They're pretty athletic, a lot like Middlebury. But I'm
not sure they're better than any of those guys, to be completely
frank with you."

Another part of the film shows a special graduation ceremony for
a small group of senior lacrosse players, and assistant coach Scott
Rynne, who earned a master's degree, during the team's postseason
run.

"Many schools claim to have scholar-athletes, we really do,"
Tufts president Larry Bacow said during the graduation.

There's a ton of game and practice footage, as well as
individual interviews with Daly, and current Tufts players D.J.
Hessler and Alec Bialosky. You can also sense the emotion Daly
feels for this team, and the Tufts players that came before this
group. That jives with what Daly told me during a Give and Go
interview for the April issue of Lacrosse Magazine.

Q: What's been the proudest moment of your
lacrosse career?

"Being in Baltimore [for the 2010 D-III championship], seeing
all the alums that came back," Daly said. "Certainly the
championship was great, but being around our alums and the guys
that played for us was a special moment for me, special for our
family, for all those guys to come back and see our kids all grown
up. That was the most emotional time for me of the weekend was
seeing our former players back. I would say close to 90 percent of
the guys I've coached were back, and if they weren't, they were at
something very pressing."

The film is worth a watch. I wasted 30 minutes watching it
Tuesday night, and enjoyed the time. It's a nice reminder that NCAA
tournament season is here.